The Silent Brother: A Literary Thriller

'Harrowing but wonderful' - Jane Jesmond
When his beloved little brother is stolen away, five-year-old Tommy Farrier is left alone with his alcoholic mam, his violent step-dad and his guilt. Too young to understand what has really happened, Tommy is sure of only one thing. He is to blame.\nTommy tries to be good, to live-up to his brother’s increasingly hazy memory, but trapped in a world of shame and degradation he grows up with just two options; poverty or crime. And crime pays. Or so he thinks.\nA teenage drug dealer for the vicious Burns gang, Tommy’s life is headed for disaster, until, in the place he least expects, Tommy sees a familiar face… And then things get a whole lot worse.\nThe Inspiration Behind The Silent Brother
Working in the east end of Newcastle could be pretty dispiriting. Hard as we tried to make things better, there was always someone, plenty of someones, ready to tear it down. Drug and alcohol abuse was everywhere – as was anger and frustration, vented in seemingly pointless, and often vicious violence.\nPut in a new central heating system, they’d rip it out to sell the copper pipe. Give them double-glazing, they’d put a brick through it. During the riots of 1999, local people set fire to their neighbour’s homes. In the end, it was hard to avoid feeling that these people deserved what they got.\nThey didn’t.\nThere was a time, in living memory for some, when fully half the world’s shipping was built on the Tyne, and people would joke about the obvious foolishness of bringing coals to Newcastle. Not anymore.\nThese days, when a major employer closes down, special teams are brought into the area to help with retraining and to attract new employers. But in Thatcher’s Britain, when the unions, heavy industry and even the north itself was the enemy – closing down the mines and the decline of the shipyards was an end in itself. A victory. Something like the victory in Iraq, with no plan beyond winning the 'war'. The effect on these communities was devastating. Generations of skilled workers lost their jobs. More than that, they lost their identity and their union, and often their families. How could they teach their children the meaning of a hard day's work for a fair day's pay? - in this new world of every man for himself. And why would their children listen to these old mens' stories? - when both father and children were signing on at the same dole office.\nAbandoned and useless, these once proud men faded away. Worse still, their children grew up without hope or direction. The old order was gone, and there was nothing to replace it and nothing to do, except anaesthetize yourself from day to day, until the hopelessness got too much - and erupted into violence. Ambition meant getting a few quid together, enough to score a deal to get you through the emptiness, until next week’s giro. Dignity and community were replaced by crime and booze and drugs.\nWe’re on the third generation now. For them, the glory days are something the history teacher drones on about. It has nothing to do with their lives.\nIn a community with so little hope, overstretched social services and policing priorities elsewhere, it’s easy for the gangsters to take over – and anyway, no one likes a grass. Some, heroically, stay and fight for their community. But the truth is that most of the time, those who can, get out.\nThis is the world our hero, Tommy grows up in. So if The Silent Brother is dark in places, it’s because my aim is to tell it how it is. To highlight the link between victim and perpetrator, and show you that often, they are one and the same.\nSimon Van der Velde March 2022